Father Hacks Donkey Kong for Daughter, Gender Equity

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting about a father who hacked the arcade classic Donkey Kong  so that his daughter could play as a female protagonist:

While women make up about half of all gamers, the hobby isn’t always the friendliest place for female players. In a marketplace dominated by muscle-bound space marines and ineffective female sidekicks, it’s not hard to see why women might feel alienated.

Retro gaming is not much better: The old-school game “Donkey Kong” details one of Super Mario’s earliest adventures, in which the plumber rescues a woman named Pauline from the titular brutish ape. When one programmer’s young daughter asked why she couldn’t play as Pauline instead, her father mulled it over and replied with a hacked version of the game, completely reversing the characters’ roles.